180˚. Eureka, a thought about changing consumer behavior

Again I was walking the dog and came up with an interesting thought. I was contemplating on my thesis – Harry and I are working on it, as it will be my ultimate research goal for the next couple of years. The current title is “What is the influence of cross media on the relationship between consumer and company? And/or, how does the relationship between consumer and company change under influence of cross media?” Somewhere along the thinking path, I came across 180˚. For me this seems quite obvious. The questions above imply a certain C2B; consumer to business approach.

C2B Is probably a new thought. I got the idea from Harry who gave me “Brand to community” and in our talks, it became clear that there is a tendency of consumers shifting their paradigms to receiving them to giving propositions to brands, companies, organizations. We all know the old B2C marketing and we even understand that there is a C2C; consumers to consumers, telling the world about their favorite brands. But consumers telling brands what they want – giving propositions to brands – that’s new.

I set upon the task of worming myself into these thoughts and came up with the work title 180˚. I can identify certain weak signals that consumers want to tell the brands what they expect of them. It’s not so new. The automotive industry enables individual buyers to adjust their car to their own standards. Nike and K-Swiss offer people to personalize their sneakers. And, as far as I am concerned, this trend is just the beginning of what I now call 180˚. Everything will change.

In my book Vision, Mission, Compassion, I talked about the rotation dynamics in society. And now I see that those words, given by Hans Dijkstra, are becoming reality. The rotation dynamics, or better Dynamics of Rotation is: explained as follows: Normally, the dynamics of rotation in the triad of the Mission is clockwise, from Master plan to Requirements to Concept, unless we reverse directions, i.e. move from Concept to Requirements. This dynamics – moving reversely – is hardly ever practised in organisations currently. Organisations and the people who operate within them commonly remain in the vicious circle of rules and regulations. This results in over-regulation, both in our organisations as it does in society; rule after rule (Requirements) is apparently needed to structure our living together (in broader terms, our Doing (Concept) until people are fed up by over-regulation and will, mostly collaborately, protest en act: reverse the dynamics. This dynamics of reversal will not move to Requirements but to Kernel, the start of the next phase, that of Participation. We make a very relevant reverse move; from Concept to Kernel. Kernel is the first foundation of the compassion statement. This reverse in dynamics is in fact the move we make from the Planning phase (Master plan, Requirements, Concept) to the Participation phase (Kernel, Targets, Identity). Thus, this reverse dynamics is a true milestone in the processes of Communicative Strategy.

If you have not read the book, this may sound abracadabra. No sweat. What it means is that people are constantly fed with new rules, ideas, thoughts, you name it. What happens is that we don’t see the benefit anymore. There is no added value in new things around us, whether they are rules or new things. We seem to accept new things as a given fact. But instead, we react to all these changes in a way nobody seems to be able to anticipate on; we act differently. We do so by turning things around. 180˚ in a constant pace, just like we fill a bucket with drops of water time after time, until it flows over; the tipping point.

I believe that one of the most important factors of this collaborative behavior comes from being given the opportunity to be informed and actually do something with the information given through modern media; we know so much more than before there were cross media. This idea implies that cross media (the new ones, I must insist) actually change our behavior. Let’s find out.

3 Responses

Nice post, it is good to see that you’re getting further with your question. One thing I must note, crossmedia is a way of communication. Indeed a consumers could get a stronger connection with e.g. a brand if multiple media with a strong message connection the media is used. But a stronger connection doesn’t necessarily mean that B2C will automatically change into C2B.

Indeed, crossmedia could actually change our behavior if it means that users participate more in different media. But I think the problem lies within the combination of, a way to communicate (crossmedia) and a new way to let users particpate (?prosumerism/social media?).

Perhaps I’m looking at this from a wrong perspective but this is actually the problem I stumbled upon in defining a suitable research question.

And what about Crowdsourcing. Having public online chats with your audience in which they can tell their wants, needs and complaints. Let costumers invent their own products! Saves time in the creative departments, too. All you have to do is make the product and listen to the customer. The problem in this is ego. From an ego point of view, it is not so nice to produce something that somebody else has invented. It’s nicer to have something produced that you can call your own invention. Thus, this is the link between marketing and (in spiritual, eastern terms) Buddishm or (in scientific, western terms) Quantum physics.

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